Is this scene at all inappropriate? An eleven-year-old boy and an eleven-year-old girl feel awkward after the girl compliments the boy, and they don’t know what to say as they look at each other with uncertainty. The boy’s eleven-year-old friend says, “Get a room.” As everyone knows, “Get a room” is a euphemism for “go make out or have sex” in private.

This exchange occurs in a very popular middle grade book I bought for my then-ten-year-old Little Brother mentee. As any responsible parent or mentor should, I read the book first. When I got to that line, I chose not to give it to my mentee.

This book has rave reviews from parents on Amazon. If those parents actually read the book and think eleven-year-olds having sex or even hinting at such behavior or joking about it is cute, there’s something wrong with those parents. Sadly, pushing the envelope in middle grade fiction is happening, just as it did long ago when teen lit was christened “Young Adult” (even though young adulthood, according to psychologists, and the law, ranges from age eighteen to twenty-five.) Thirteen years olds are young adults? According to the book industry they are. In reality, they are far from young adulthood. These are middle school kids, still adolescents, still children. Not young adults. Not even close. Even at eighteen, legal adults are still teens. But pushing kids to leapfrog over necessary developmental stages seems to be the current intent of all media, including books.

On Amazon, a middle grade book featuring twelve or thirteen year olds is listed as suitable for eight-year-olds. Why? To make more money for the publisher and Amazon. Anyone who’s ever raised children or taught them knows that a twelve-year-old is way ahead of an eight-year-old on the developmental scale, and no conscientious parents would allow their eight-year-old to pal around with twelve or thirteen-year-olds. So why is it suitable for eight year olds to read books aimed at twelve and thirteen-year-olds? It isn’t.

The excuse has been that children are demanding books about kids older than themselves. Not true. Children are curious about everything. If you put age-inappropriate material in front of them, they will watch it or read it, and then their brains will have been rewired so that they want more inappropriate stuff. That’s how our brains work, and it’s the essence of addiction. It’s bad enough that Hollywood seems bound and determined to rob children of their innocence, but the book industry used to take its job more seriously. Way too many TV shows aimed at children depict ten, eleven, twelve-year-olds on the prowl for a boyfriend or girlfriend, and the on-screen kids lament that they’re not in a relationship. Children haven’t changed. What they’re exposed to has. Especially social media. No child under high school age should have a smartphone, but millions do.

I often see what middle school kids post on social media, and it’s not good. A ten-year-old once told me he wanted a girlfriend. I asked why, and he didn’t know. But I know. That boy already has a smartphone and is on social media, where the message is loud and clear – if you’re not in a relationship, you’re a worthless failure and have no value in your own right, no matter your age.

I know twelve-year-olds with babies. This is a bad situation, for them and the babies they produce. Encouraging children and teens to have sex—even in wink, wink, nudge, nudge ways—is beyond disturbing, and I can’t understand this agenda to adultify children at younger and younger ages. It makes no sense. How often do you see boys and girls as young as eight or nine referred to as young men or young women in the news or on social media? Attune yourself to that notion and you’ll see it everywhere. Labelling children “young adults” defies all common sense and rationality. And it damages the children more than anyone else.

Check out the image I used to lead off this post. It’s a real ad for a child’s Peter Pan costume that purports to make your little boy look “sexy.” Clothes for little girls are already disturbing enough, but now little boys are being advertised as “sexy?” That’s sickening! If you tell children they are young adults, and allow them to access age-inappropriate media that calls them young adults, they are going to think they can engage in adult activities, like sex or drinking alcohol, to name two. And they will most certainly post inappropriate photos on social media so they can look “sexy” like the young Peter Pan above, except they are more likely to be wearing less clothing. Is there anyone out there who thinks this is a healthy trend?

An acclaimed middle grade book is called Wonder. In most ways, this is a terrific book with positive messages about acceptance. However, in this story, ten-year-olds are depicted as partying like teens, pairing up in boy-girl romantic relationships, and dating. And the worst part? These behaviors are presented as normative. Only one parent in the entire book tells her son he’s too young to date. At ten, he’s too young to date? Ya think? Of course, he is!

The fact that editors and publishers allow such messages to be sent to children brings me back to the agenda question. What is the agenda, and who stands to gain by it? I know who stands to lose – the children. They are sent so many mixed messages by media and society these days, it’s no wonder the number of adolescent mental health cases in America has skyrocketed in recent years. https://www.sovteens.com/mental-health/mental-illness-increasing-among-adolescents/

As authors, I believe it is our responsibility to present developmentally appropriate stories for children and teens. Books should be a more conscientious form of entertainment than Hollywood and social media, which seek to suck children into the addiction trap. Middle grade fiction should be for eleven, twelve, and thirteen year olds only, since they are middle schoolers, and the publishing industry needs to stop telling Amazon and other sites to list them as suitable for eight-year-olds. In addition, books with thirteen-year-olds can certainly involve skittishness on the part of boys and girls with each other, because that is reality, but nothing more is needed. Just as violence is kept at bay in middle grade fiction, romance/sex should be even more so.

As parents, we have so much to do without having to police the books our kids read like we police the media they pursue. But for the sake of children going through their natural developmental stages, we must be vigilant, and at least skim through any books our preteens want to read. At the very least, check the book out on LitPick.com, an online review site wherein teens and children review books aimed at their age group. They rate the books and provide content warnings, under the supervision of adults – https://litpick.com/.Commonsensemedia.org also has content ratings for children and teen books that are well-articulated, written by both parents and kids – https://www.commonsensemedia.org/. Also, if a book on Amazon is rated for age eight to twelve, it’s important to read the “What’s Inside” preview and the reviews. Check the negative reviews and look for clues to inappropriate content.

Childhood is already too short. If we allow Hollywood, social media, and now books to steal it away, that’s a crime of insurmountable proportions. Unplugging our kids from media, and making sure they have good books with positive, age-appropriate themes and messages, is an essential step toward molding them into healthy teens and decent adults.

I thought I’d devote a post to the fun of meme-making. I LOVE making memes to promote my books or precepts I live by. I use Photoshop to create my memes and feel I’ve gotten better over time at creating images that look reasonably professional. However, I’m not anywhere near a professional and that is obvious, but I have fun making them. Feel free to share any that you like, but please give me the credit. I’ll go in the order of book release dates, even though I might have created some memes after a book came out. You can learn more about all these books here on my website.

A MATTER OF TIME was my second book that mashed up several genres and time periods. This meme presents my original cover art from 2012 and one by a professional artist named Howard David Johnson created in 2016. The difference is, well, obvious. LOL

The CHILDREN OF THE KNIGHT series, published throughout 2013-2014, is more relevant now than when it came out, dealing with numerous social justice issues facing America today, especially those that impact marginalized children and teens. The target audience is high school youth and adults due to mature language and themes.

An ad I created for YA Books Central.

A poster I used for promotion that incorporates some of the final cover elements.

A meme that incorporates one of the primary themes.

An alternate take on possible cover art that I used to promote the second book. It teases a major revelation from the first chapter.

This meme was created by the assistant to a fellow author who was helping me promote this book.

Michael is a teen teetering on the edge of madness who leads Lance down a path toward imminent self-destruction.

This one is pretty self-explanatory, especially for readers of the books. Lance becomes a beloved figure worldwide who is invited to both the White House and Congress.

Again, this scene explains itself. If you want to learn more about the Children’s Bill of Rights, you’ll have to read the books.

Lance graduates high school. I made this to celebrate the graduation of a boy who loved the Children of the Knight series and admired Lance as a character. I posted this pic on his FB wall along with my congratulations.

I made this to promote the series. I even have a poster of it just in case I have the opportunity to attend an author event.

This is a Dream Cast poster I created for a CHILDREN OF THE KNIGHT blog tour in 2013. Obviously, the cast would change if the book were to be filmed now, but I think these actors would have been stellar.

SPINNER is a teen horror thriller that some reviewers have compared to Stephen King’s “It,” which I find very flattering. This book features teen protagonists who have disabilities and modeled on kids I taught for many years in my career as a high school teacher. I went overboard on the memes for this one. LOL Here are some that I used to promote this 2015 release. Enjoy!

I was asked to create a Spinner Dream Cast presentation for a YA Author Scavenger Hunt last fall. This is the result.

WARRIOR KIDS: A TALE OF NEW CAMELOT is my last published book and is a standalone sequel to the Children of the Knight Series aimed at Middle Grade and High School readers. It deals with the often contentious issue of climate change and can be safely used in school classrooms to teach kids about environmental concerns. There are extension activities at the back and, unlike the other Children of the Knight books, the language isn’t “street.” It does, however, depict how racism, the venal pursuit of fame, and “group think” prevent real progress toward fixing all human dilemmas. Here are the memes I’ve used to promote this book. BTW, for teachers, the book is available for free at https://sharemylesson.com/teaching-resource/middle-grade-novel-kids-vs-climate-change-275506.

This is the logo I created that the kids in the book wear on their shirts and beanies.

Lastly, here are some random memes I made that deal with important precepts, themes I write about, or what I think is important for people to consider.

So these are most of the memes I’ve created, but there are some I know I’ve forgotten because I’ve made so many. LOL Feel free to comment on any that you like or don’t like and, as I said before, feel free to share (but please give me credit. Thanks.) I hope you’ve enjoyed these images and the messages they contain as much as I enjoyed creating them. Meme-making rocks! Don’t you want to rush right to your computer and start meming? I do. Onward and upward!

As part of the YA Scavenger Hunt, I was asked to create a Dream Cast if my book, Spinner, was made into a film. Since the Hunt is over, I can share this on my own blog along with an “interview” written for the fictional Mark Twain High School newspaper created to support the initial release of the book. The interview introduces the main protagonists and reveals the ignorance special ed kids face on a daily basis. Feel free to comment on either the Dream Cast or the interview, especially if you have read the book or know kids we label “special ed.” Labels belong on food products, not people. I think all of us want to be seen as ourselves with unique qualities and abilities, but this country has an obsession with labels. Spinner is a horror thriller aimed at teens and adults who like a page-turning story featuring protagonists seldom seen as heroic because they have been slapped with a label that narrowly defines them. Check out the book on Amazon or Barnes and Noble and meet some unforgettable characters.

A Revealing Interview

by Karina Martinez for

The Daily Cougar

It is a somber day as I approached the lunch table. This group of SPED students (Special Education) has experienced a tragic loss – their teacher was killed last night, run down by a truck outside her apartment. We’ve never had such a tragedy at Mark Twain High. Ms. Lorna Ashley had been teaching Special Education for four years and her class was always self-contained. That means the students were with her the whole day, for every class. Her current group consists of six male students, all gathered around the most beat-up of the lunch tables not far from their classroom. I have my faithful photographer with me – Jasmine Rodriguez – and we both try to look professional as we stop at their table. These kids have a reputation around campus for being weird and usually nobody ever goes near them. One of the boys is in a wheelchair, but the others look normal. You’d never know they were Special Ed.

I introduce Jasmine and myself. The boys stare at us like we’re from Mars or something. The white haired boy, Alex, the one in the wheelchair, has these amazing blue eyes that almost make me forget what I was there for. I explain that I write for the school paper and we’re doing a story on Ms. Ashley’s death.

“Why?” That comes from the light-skinned black kid named Java. He glowers and looks suspiciously at the camera Jasmine holds.

“Well, we’ve never had anything like this happen before,” I explain, “and it’s big news when a teacher gets killed.”

Israel, dark hair, really handsome, blurts out, “What the hell?”

That catches me off-guard. “Well, I just mean, it’s something the school paper can’t ignore.”

Jorge, tall and thin with unkempt black hair, hands me a piece of paper with no expression on his face. It has a big red “V” scrawled on it. I exchange a nervous glance with Jasmine, who stifles a giggle, and then turn back to Jorge.

“What’s this for?”

“We’ve never had anything like this happen before,” Jorge says in a monotone voice, repeating my words to me. I confess, I’m feeling creeped out.

Roy, the skinny white kid with snakebite piercings in his lower lip brushes hair from in front of his eyes. Those eyes look sad to me. “Ms. Ashley was a great teacher. She was like a mom to us. That’s all you gotta write.”

There’s a Vietnamese kid named Cuong at the table, but he just plays with a Gameboy like we’re not even there. Alex stares at me with those blue eyes and I feel like he’s looking right through me. I shiver. He’s the one our readers most want to hear from because he’s the most disabled kid we have at Mark Twain, being in a wheelchair and all. So I focus on him.

“So, um, Alex, do you have anything to say about Ms. Ashley?”

Alex’s intense look doesn’t let up at all. His white blond hair falls across his forehead and back over his collar. His serious expression doesn’t hide his good looks. If he weren’t crippled he’d be hot enough to date.

“Like Roy said, Ms. Ashley was the best teacher I ever had,” Alex answers, his voice filled with sadness. “She never got mad at us when we couldn’t do something. She just helped us find some other way. She loved us.”

I take notes as he speaks, still feeling those deep blue eyes looking through me. “So, you guys are Special Ed, right?”

“Yeah, so?” Java says. He’s big and buff and wears one of those tight shirts like pro football players. He looks scary.

“Well, our readers don’t know much about being special ed. Are you guys like, retarded?”

I ask it innocently because that’s usually what special ed means, but Java’s face turns stormy.

“We are not retarded!” Israel shouts. Other kids milling about look over curiously. Now I feel embarrassed.

Alex places one hand on Roy’s arm and that calms him a little. He looks at Alex and Alex shakes his head slightly. Still angry, Roy re-seats himself.

“No, I can’t walk,” Alex replies, those eyes fixed intently on me.

I try to steer this interview into a non-threatening direction. “What’s it like, not to walk?”

“Shut up!” Israel says loudly. He can’t seem to speak in any tone other than loud. He draws more attention to me than I want.

Then Jorge says, “Shut up,” and sounds eerily like Israel. I shiver again.

“It’s okay, Izzy,” Alex says. I think he’s probably been asked that question a lot because he just sighs and looks up at me from his wheelchair. “What’s it like to walk? I never have so I don’t know.”

That answer floors me and I have no response.

“See?” Alex goes on. “Normal is different for everybody. Maybe you could print that and the kids around here might stop talking crap about us and calling me Roller Boy all the time. We’re not losers like everybody says. Roy could fix anything in this school that breaks down. And Java could kick ass on the football team ‘cept people keep calling him a dummy. He’s not. Not of us are. We’re just different.”

I’m trying to write down every word because it’s all so amazing and so unlike what I thought these kids were like. I guess I thought they were dumb because that’s what I always heard. I realize that this is the first time I ever interacted with them. Alex stops talking and I stop writing. The others are staring at me and I feel like I should say something, but don’t know what. Then it hits me.

“Could I try out your wheelchair?”

“The hell?” Israel blurts, even louder.

Alex looks at me with open-mouthed surprise and I realize I didn’t ask the question very well. “I, uh, I just thought I could write a better story about what it’s like to be crippled if I sat in your chair and, you know, wheeled around a little.”

Roy leaps to his feet again. “Get lost. We’re not freaks and Alex ain’t crippled! He can do anything you can and more!”

Jasmine giggles beside me and I nudge her, trying to salvage this interview.

“It’s okay, Roy,” Alex says quietly. “Let her try.”

“Alex! She’s just messing with you.”

“No, I’m not, really,” I answer quickly. “I just want to feel what it would be like to sit all the time.”

Roy’s angry look makes me realize I said the wrong thing again. I’m really wishing Ms. Jacobs hadn’t given me this assignment. Alex touches Roy’s arm again in a calming way and pushes himself up and out of his wheelchair onto the bench so easily I think I gasped. His arms and upper body look pretty buff, but he moved so easily I’m shocked.

“Go ahead,” he says. “Try it out.”

I feel all of them mad-dogging me as I step forward and uncertainly sit in the chair. I try to push forward, but my feet on the ground get in my way.

“Your feet go on the footrest,” Alex says and points to it.

I look down and see where he’s pointing and place my feet there. Then I start wheeling around. It’s fun, I find myself thinking, almost like riding in a Go-Kart. Jasmine snaps some pictures of me in the chair and the SPED kids watching.

“How is it?” Jasmine asks.

Before I can stop myself, I say, “It’s fun.”

I spin around and head back toward her. Other kids standing nearby laugh and point.

“Let me try,” Jasmine says.

I hop out of the chair and she plops into it. Wheeling herself around in circles, she makes like she’s going to run into another kid standing off to the side. The kid lurches back and Jasmine laughs. All the students standing around laugh and point to Alex and his friends. I hear one of them say, “Hey, it’s Roller Girl.”

“This is so cool,” Jasmine gushes, and I catch Alex’s facial expression when she does. He looks like someone punched him. Those blue eyes look so hurt I almost feel like crying. I hurry to Jasmine.

“Give him back the chair.”

Reluctantly, she steps out of it and I wheel the chair back to Alex. He gives me a look that pierces my heart and I realize how hurtful what we just did is to him. He slides himself deftly into the chair and pulls his feet onto the footrest.

Roy steps up to me. He’s really mad. “You had your fun, now get the hell outta here and leave us alone!”

I step back as all of them stand up to mad-dog me. Even the Vietnamese kid stops playing his game to glower. I exchange a nervous glance with Jasmine, who hurriedly snaps a few more pictures.

Jasmine grabs my arm to pull me away. I can’t help but look into Alex’s blue eyes one last time. He looks so wounded. “I’m sorry, Alex, about the chair thing. See ya around.”

Alex doesn’t answer, so I turn to follow Jasmine away into the crowd. The other kids are still laughing.

Note: This is how I wrote up the article, but Ms. Jacobs decided not to run it. She felt it would embarrass Alex and his friends, and then she spent an entire period teaching us proper ways to ask difficult questions during an interview. I know I blew it, but at least I now understand that the kids we call Special Ed are just as human as I am, and I plan to treat them that way from now on.

As a child growing up with a significant sensorineural hearing loss and no hearing aids to assist me, I found life confusing and often embarrassing. Most of my humiliations came in the arena of team sports, whether it was little league, peewee basketball, or just a pick-up football games with the neighborhood kids.

I recently attended the Angel City Games in Los Angeles—track and field events for kids and adults with physical challenges. Some of the participants were in wheelchairs, some wore prosthetic legs and some were developmentally delayed. I was heartened to see how far we’ve come in making sports for kids with disabilities both accessible and enriching. I know there are also sports teams specifically for deaf kids, where the coaching is done via sign language, but I got to wondering if there have been accommodations made for hard-of-hearing kids who want to participate in team sports with non-hearing impaired kids, so I did some Internet searching.

Within the public school setting—in theory, anyway—there are assistive devices available. For example, in basketball, a red light can be installed behind each backboard that signals the end of a quarter. Portable loop systems with the coach using a microphone and the kid wearing a hearing device can facilitate communication between the two. These are similar to auditory trainers used in classrooms to augment the hearing of HOH students. The teacher wears a microphone and the child wears the headphone and in this way the teacher’s voice goes straight into the student’s ear. For football, there can even be a hearing aid within a modified helmet so the player can hear the coach more clearly. These are a few of the adaptations that are obtainable, assuming a school district will pay for them.

Having used auditory trainers with students, I saw that most kids don’t like to wear the headphones, especially if they are in a co-taught or a general education classroom because—no surprise here—they don’t want to stand out as “different.” I can attest from experience that kids tend to treat “different” as though it were some kind of disease, which is why kids who are “different” don’t want to call attention to their “differentness.” Sadly, the school system and our society still push conformity and sameness and “one size fits all,” so is it any wonder kids are reluctant to accept differentness in their peers?

Fifteen per cent of children between six and nineteen have a measurable hearing loss in at least one ear—approximately thirteen million kids. They have significant hearing loss, but are not deaf or otherwise “special needs.” Do neighborhood sports programs like the kind I was involved in as a child make any accommodations for these kids to play on their teams with non-disabled peers? That’s the more relevant question, I think, for parents who have a HOH child, because those are the kinds of programs most readily available.

My experiences as a child athlete were miserable. I probably misheard every instruction a coach ever gave me, especially if I was on the basketball court or out in right field for little league. In mishearing the command, I did something counter to what I was told to do and got royally chewed out for messing up. Needless to say, I was not popular on these teams because I always did everything wrong. A sensorineural hearing loss, in particular, makes human speech unclear or even, at times, garbled. In that regard, it’s not unlike an auditory processing deficit where the brain scrambles up words that enter through the ear and causes the child to respond in a way that might seem non sequitur, defiant, or outright stupid. I got the “stupid” tag a lot. And here’s the crazy part—I believed it. I believed I was stupid and inept because I did everything wrong. And I never associated my “ineptness” with my hearing loss because it was “invisible” and hardly ever mentioned by the adults in my life.

I doubt much would’ve been changed to accommodate me even if people were more cognizant of my disability because “one size fits all” was even stronger back then. So I simply came to the conclusion that I was stupid and clumsy and sucked at athletics and I ended up hating sports with a passion. Only in college did I become somewhat athletic. I took up running and weight lifting and swimming—activities I could do by myself or with a friend that didn’t involve a large team or an angry coach demanding to know why I did this or that stupid thing.

This brings me back to sports programs at local parks and YMCA’s and other venues that are not part of the public school system. In my Internet search, I found summer camps for deaf and hearing-impaired children, but could not find local sports programs or little league teams promoting accommodations for HOH kids. It’s possible that they will make such accommodations if a parent asks, but it seems to me such an important aspect of the program should be advertised, especially given the large number of children with hearing loss.

Even if a child has hearing aids, that doesn’t mean they will be effective for an outfielder, a lineman, defensive midfielder, or the power forward in a noisy, echo-filled gym surrounded by screaming fans. Most sports, especially baseball, have numerous hand signals coaches flash to players to bunt or run or hold up on a base. These are perfect for the HOH player. Even more specific gestures can be worked out between the player and the coach (and/or other team members) to ensure proper communication. It really isn’t difficult for a HOH kid to play sports as long as the coaching staff and other players remember that communication doesn’t have to be verbal.

Colored flags could help. For example, a red flag could mean move closer. To an outfielder this would mean move closer to the infield. For an infielder, it would mean move closer to the bag. A blue flag could mean the opposite—move farther into the outfield or away from the bag. Colored flags could work in most sports to mean whatever the coach and player decide they mean. Trust me when I say how much better my failed sporting life might have been if I’d had even this one simple accommodation.

I think parents advocate more for their HOH kids than in my childhood. It wasn’t that my parents intentionally ignored my disability. It was just that the disability was invisible and easy to forget about. As noted above, I forgot about it myself, even as a coach or my mom chewed me out for not doing something right, or for not listening. I was told more than once, “You can hear when you want to.” This was not true. A HOH child only hears what his or her limited hearing allows. Nothing more or less. Even “listening harder” won’t clarify speech if the other person is too far away or there is background noise or the other person isn’t facing the child. Sometimes just the pitch of a person’s voice makes clarity problematic. Like all kids with disabilities, I instinctively compensated—which for me meant reading lips. I did this unconsciously and became so good at it I could almost follow a TV show with the volume off and still understand most of the dialogue. As long as the actor faced the screen, I “heard” him or her.

Hearing loss is a physical disability—it just doesn’t involve visible damage to the body or limbs. Yes, hearing aids are helpful. But they are limited. Parents and coaches and team members can easily make the small accommodations I mentioned, and many others of their own devising, that will guarantee the HOH child has a positive experience. The child will not only feel like an equal member of the team, but might also blossom into an outstanding athlete. I doubt I ever had such innate ability, but my experiences were so demoralizing I never attempted to find out. As events like the Angel City Games prove, we have gotten better at including disabled children in athletic competitions. However, let’s not forget the invisible disabilities like hearing loss or auditory processing. These kids want to play, too.

My first year in little league. I’m in the back row on the far right and I look happy at starting this new adventure.Here I am with my second (and thankfully final) little league team. I’m in the back row, fourth from the left, much bigger, but with the same hearing loss that made the first season so abysmal. As you can plainly see, I look like I want to be anywhere else but on this team.

Hope. It comes in many forms and from many sources. It is the cornerstone of a positive, productive life. It is an essential ingredient for all of us, especially kids. Adults must model it. Adults must share it. Adults must embrace it if kids are ever going to. Sadly, our media, for the most part, disdains hope. There are serious problems in our communities, our cities, our country, and our world, but the media is like a flock of vultures feeding off the carrion of human self-absorption, greed, and aggression. It purposely deprives viewers and readers of the most essential ingredient to life—hope. Humans have serious issues that need solutions, but if the populace is constantly fed the message that the sky is falling, that everyone and everything is corrupt, that there is no hope of redemption for the human species, then life might as well be over on this planet because there’s little reason to keep on living. Too many groups make too much money and acquire too much fame with doom and gloom scenarios, from the climate change movement to people in academia to our justice system and, obviously, within the political arena.

There are two things people can do to keep hope alive in their hearts—tune out the media except in small doses, and spend as much time as possible volunteering.

I had the pleasure of helping as a volunteer this past weekend at the Angel City Games held on the UCLA campus in Los Angeles. This event was four days of clinics and coaching and then actual track and field events for people with physical disabilities, mostly children and teens. It was a truly heartening experience to see so many kids un-stacking the deck that life tried unsuccessfully to stack against them and turning their disabilities into very impressive abilities. I saw toddlers throwing the javelin and discus and putting the shot. But the high jump and some of the track events were the highlight of my volunteer time. One seven-year-old named Antonio competed in the 100m, the 400m, and the 1500m in a regular street wheelchair (there were racing chairs available, but he didn’t use one). We clapped and cheered as he finished every race he entered. He came in last, of course. He had short arms and the wrong chair. But he pushed and huffed and puffed his way across that finish line every time. There was no way he was going to quit. It just wasn’t in him. I felt honored to shake Antonio’s hand. That’s a boy who will never allow life to beat him down in any way. There’s no “sky is falling” in him, only hope and the will to succeed. The same can be said of all the child and teen athletes. Badass to the bone!

When I mentioned to a friend that I was volunteering at this event, the first question was, “Do you have someone disabled in your family?” I told him no, though I do have a disability of my own that made participation in sports as a child nearly impossible. But that will be the subject of my next post. Admittedly, most people tend to become involved in “causes” and volunteerism based on someone in their family or circle of friends who draws them in. Thus, there is a vested interest, as it were, to be involved in this or that arena. The Angel City Games were started by the family of a boy who has had a prosthetic leg since he was a toddler and who loves to compete in these kinds of events. They finally decided, rather than travel out of state to have him compete, that they’d start their own annual event, not just for him, but for other disabled children. Awesome. Kudos to this family for starting something that will benefit so many.

But do we always have to have a personal stake to get involved and make some situation better? I argue no. In fact, I strongly advise people to step out of their comfort zones and volunteer in areas they would never encounter in their daily lives. I did this over thirty years ago with incarcerated children, and I’m still there today volunteering my time and meager talents toward helping those desperately needy kids.

Volunteering is a fantastic family activity, too. I saw numerous parents and their kids volunteering at the games over the weekend. People are inherently self-centered, and children will stay that way—they can eventually become egomaniacal selfie kings and queens—unless they are brought out of themselves to see and be part of a larger world. That’s why volunteering at events like this is the perfect family weekend. Kids who may whine about something in their own lives will see other children who have struggled with far worse and rose above that issue or difficulty to triumph and be happy. Watching people work together, and helping those people work together for the betterment of others, is a fundamental key to hope, and it fosters gratitude in both children and adults.

Another aspect of hope the Angel City Games instilled in me was how much “good” technology has created. There’s too much doom and gloom, especially from some the environmental activist crowd, about how technology is destroying the planet (challenge one of those activists, especially a young American, to give up his or her cell phone and Wi-Fi and you’ll likely get the pronouncement that other people are the problem, not him/her). Seeing the incredible prosthetics these athletic children were using at the Games, not to mention the impressive racing chairs, all of which enable them to have full, productive lives, reminded me that technological advances are always more of a help than a hindrance. Despite the activists’ lament, it’s technology that’s the key to reversing the effects of pollution, and technology will allow us to heal the earth, at least as much as humans can ever truly “control” nature, of course. To listen to some in the “activist” crowd, we’re already doomed. If we’re already doomed, why do such organizations keep asking for more and more of our money? I wrote one of my books about the environment and the need for balance on this issue. Not just balance, either, but volunteerism—people voluntarily recycling and using less gas and not throwing away anything useful because it might be outdated, and, number one, sharing their time and material goods with others. It’s working together as a community that solves problems, not donating to this group or that or asking the government to fix everything.

Volunteerism is the key. In the Los Angeles area there are myriad volunteer opportunities every weekend and even on weeknights. It’s not hard to find them – a simple Internet search will do that job. And if there is something you feel passionate about—like beach cleanups or tutoring or visiting elderly people or helping the homeless or visiting incarcerated kids or mentoring children in park programs or within church groups—gather some of your friends together and make it happen. If no one is willing to help, do it yourself and you’ll meet other like-minded people who think about the big picture like you do. I met some very cool people over the weekend, as I always do when I volunteer. I learned about their backgrounds and they about mine. Volunteering breaks down barriers between groups of people and that’s something we need far more of in this country.

I call this path to hope and change “We Over Me” because that is how problems are solved – each one of us has to put our ego aside, stop seeking fame, fortune, and self-aggrandizement, and work hands-on with fellow citizens, no matter what they look like or how different they may appear. This is a major theme in my writing because I know that all of us working together—rather than groups pointing the finger at each other—is the only way our species and our planet will ever heal. The primary ingredient in that healing is hope.

So please, turn off the news, spend minutes, rather than hours, on social media, and get out in your community to volunteer anywhere you can. Bring your children and your friends. Bring your heart and your compassion. Bring an open mind. Let yourself be filled with hope for a change, instead of despair. You will never regret your decision. You and your children will be better for giving of yourselves without expecting anything in return. You won’t become famous. You won’t get rich. But you’ll feel rejuvenated, as I did this past weekend. You’ll have hope in your hearts that humanity isn’t doomed, and you’ll have helped in some small way toward a better future, not just for the people you served, but for all of us.

Check out my guest post on best-selling author Mia Kerick’s blog about how bullying has become institutionalized in America. You might find it enlightening or it might make you angry. Truth can do both.